Tutoring the Super-Rich

 

In the wake of the lackluster employment market and assisted by academic matchmaking agency Matt Knott ventures into teaching the superrich in London, a world where £30 an hour is the base rare, prep school coaching begins at the age of seven and writing UCAS personal statements for university applications is contracted out to consultants.

Pandemic with successive lockdowns has caused disruption in education, are finding favour, as parents are willing to pay for the extra edge, in an attempt to reconcile an increasingly uneven education system with record competition for university places. 

While rising living costs force poorer families to tighten their belts, wealthy London are adding another notch to theirs in the form of a tutor.

Knott approaches tutoring with a “minor victim complex, and a lifelong insecurity around rich people” having himself attended a private school on a scholarship. 

Asked to help a student with a long division problem, in a world where the right university on your CV is worth more than relevant qualifications.

Parents, however, pay handsomely in the hope that his alma mater will fix waning grade by osmosis. What they also want for their children is a friend, a nanny, or a father figure. For many private tutoring is a social status more than a learning aid, as the proportion of students in England and Wales receiving private tuition has doubled.

“A naked Russian 0ligarch is spanking me in his basement with a birch branch, the setting his luxurious home sauna. Above is 30, 000 Square feet of one of Moscow’s most obscene private homes, an original Damien Hirst above the fireplace, a vacuum cleaning system built into the skirting boards. Invisible speakers serenade us with a desolate pan pipe cover of “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. A light display rotates kaleidoscopically, illuminating the oligarch’s genitals in a variety of unexpected hues,   is silent. Then the Oligarch’s son Nikita looks at me with a mysterious smile. Now my mother will bring us honey”, Matt Knott who taught Shakespeare in Moscow, time tables in Tuscany, and still trying to figure out how to explain long division. Unfolding across four continents and featuring a colourful cast of butlers, billionaires, and yummy mummies, this is a hilarious and touching chronicle of an unforgettable time.

My Tutor, the online platform has reported that its customer base has trebled during school closures, with higher-income families disproportionately likely to make use of such services.

 

A Class of Their Own: Adventures in Tutoring the Super Rich by Matt Knott, Trapeze £16.99, 336 pages.